R.I.P. Vitek of Decapitated

If you follow the metal news you have learned that Vitek, the 23 year old drummer of Poland's Decapitated passed away due to severe head injuries from a trafic accident involving their tour bus on the roads in Russia.

As a fellow metal drummer I feel the need to express my deepest condolences to his fellow band members, family and fans all over the world. The Polish metal scene has lost another great drummer.

Personally I am not a huge fan of Decapitated. I've listened to their current album and enjoyed it, but there was no doubt that Vitek was a talented drummer who had a promising future ahead of him.

It's always sad when people die and even more so when they are so young. And that it happened during a tour is quite scary. Week after week, people that I know - and every now and then myself - is out on the roads, driving long distances during uncomfortable hours, and anything can happen. A couple of years ago, my friends in the local punkband The Accidents rolled of the ferry from Sweden to Germany in the early hours and crashed their tourbus on the Autobahn just a few minutes later (yes, their bandmonicker is ironic).

The Accidents were lucky. No injuries or fractures, just a few bruises, a totally smashed tourbus and a cancelled tour. Vitek and his fellow bandmate Covan (singer) weren't.

Let's all hope that Covan will recover and can comeback to the metal scene together with the rest of Decapitated in a new band or under the same name.

Happy new year!

I hope the holidays have been good for each and everyone of you and that 2007 looks like a good year for you, it certainly does for me.

2006 has been an exciting year for me, especially compared to 2005 which more or less sucked big time. Enough about that! 2006 was the year when I released two new album, created a new band and did 18 shows. Not much perhaps, but at least it's something.

First of: Krigshot. We recorded the "Till vilket pris som helst" album in December of 2005 and January 2006 and it was released by Communichaos Media in April, in which we also had a little release party show at Kafé 44 in Stockholm. I am quite pleased with the album. It was the first real thing I recorded on my equipment and I also mixed the album and did the cover - a real ego trip for sure.

And the show was good as well. We also did a second show at the Augustibuller festival which was sort of interesting in many ways. On my way to the festival I was apparently speeding (hm...) so the cops, of the "slaniga snutar" as we say in Krigshot, arrested me and gave me a ticket of huge proportions. As I was already late for the festival I sent a textmessage to the other guys saying that I was running late because I had to drive according to the rules.

When I got to the festival I was very late and during this time a rumour had started that the entire band had gotten arrested for drug possession! Rumours! Anyway, that show went well also but since then Krigshot has lain low. There were talk about a Stockholm show but it never happened.

Right now I don't know what's in the future of the band. I'd really like to do a 7" or something just quite sponteaneously but we'll see.

If you haven't heard "Till vilket pris som helst" I suggest you buy a copy at once! More info about Krigshot at krigshot.com.

I also did a show with Regurgitate during the summer. Jocke was expecting another child and couldn't leave the country to do the Grind your mother festival in Italy so I was asked to help. I did a few shows with Regurgitate in 2004 when Jocke was ill so it wasn't that surprising that I would do it again.

It was a fun trip with Rugge, Urban and Glenn, especially to get down in Europe again and meet some cool people. Napalm Death was at the festival too so it was great meeting these friends again.

The biggest thing for me 2006 was of course starting a new band, getting a record deal, recording an album, releasing the album and touring in less than a year. You should know what I'm talking about because everything happened here in the blog.

It was in January that I first explained my wish for a new band and I even announced for members in the blog. I found Anders B and Oskar and in February we had our first rehearsals and then the ball was rolling. In two months the band was completed by André and Joel and through our multitrack rehearsals we were able to get a deal with Relapse Records. Two months later we had our first show with Gadget and then recorded what became our debut album "The Contaminated Void".

Everything went very fast for this band and I am so happy about this achievement during 2006. Not in my wildest dreams could I have expected something like this to happen.

The future for Coldworker - as the name of the band is - is very bright and I hope that the band will grow during this coming year.

Do buy "The Contaminated Void" if you haven't heard it yet, and check out coldworker.com for more info.

What else has happened? Well, in December I had two sessions with Regurgitate as a recording engineer putting 16 songs to disc, to be used on splits and whatever. The recording is in the mixing stage right now and I think it sounds pretty cool. I guess you'll hear samples of it in time.

And - of course - how could I forget, "Grind Finale" was released on both CD and 4xLP during the year!

And finally, for the drummers: Just before New Year's I got a late Christmas gift in the shape of a custom-made cymbal! The truth is perhaps not as exciting as I made it out to be, but I currently have a pretty unique cymbal in my set up that I choose to call "the 11,5" custom-made bellsplash"!

The story: Earlier this year I discovered a crack in my ride cymbal, a 21" handhammered Sabian ride. I took the cymbal to the store where I bought it to see if I could get a new one on the guarentee, but too much time had passed. I didn't bother bringing the cymbal back from the store so it's been there for a couple of months.

The 27th of December I got a call from Peter Damin, a drummer extraordinaire that works there from time to time who asked me to come and get it. When I went there I asked Peter if it was possible to do something with it as I knew he experimented a lot with broken cymbals. We agreed to saw it down to a much smaller size to hopefully get an interesting effect cymbal out of it as the bell part of the cymbal was very distinct and cool.

Peter said that he would look into it after the New Year's, but just two days later as I was riding with Coldworker to Borlänge for the last show of the year, I got a phone call which started with: "Listen to this!" and then a cymbal was hit in my ear. Peter was very excited about the result and asked me to come right away, but as I was heading for a show I couldn't make it. I got it the day after and today, on the first day of the new year, I went to the rehearsal place and tried it out.

It certainly is a nice addition to my set up and I'm eager to work it into my playing. After being a four cymbal guy for about ten years I think that I will do a few additions to my set up during 2007.

Weekend in the studio

I spent the weekend in my "studio" (= the Coldworker rehearsal room) doing two recordings. On Saturday the new line up of Regurgitate came bright and early and tracked about 15 tracks for multiple use. Rugge and Urban really enjoyed the multitrack rehearsal we recorded earlier this year when I did a session with them for the "Grind your mother" festival in Italy (RGTE feat. Anders Jakobson doing Napalm Death's "Lucid Fairytale") and decided they wanted to record a few songs with me (as a producer, not drummer!).

So we did it. Unfortunately we ran out of time before we could track the vocals but we'll do that in a couple of weeks. I have yet not started mixing the songs, but I think the basic sound is pretty cool. A little rough in the edges but that was the whole point.

On Sunday I did half of a recording with my fellow Coldworker Anders B and his Ruin. We tracked drums, bass and vocals. The guitars will be recorded in another studio and the ultimately mixed by Dan Swanö in the end. This was a lot of fun, we spend quite a lot more time getting the drum sound going compared to the RGTE session, and as Ruin has a fucking solid drummer in Tobbe whipping out fast 2/2 beats and blast and double kick mayhem everything went surprisingly fast (both the music and recording).

Excuses, recommendations and pleads

It feels like I haven't been bloging much lately and that's actually true. So much has been going on with the Coldworker album and all that so bloging hasn't really been my top priority. But perhaps I can change that?

Anyway, thought I'd grace your days with some record recommendations of recent stuff that has passed through my ears...

THE HAUNTED - The dead eye

This record was torn to pieces when it leaked a couple of MONTHS ago (please stop this madness!) and I heard a few choice cuts and thought it sounded really weird to say the least. Now when I have the album I can't understand what was weird. I probably heard all the less thrashy songs early on.

In my opinion "The dead eye" isn't that much different from the last album. The production is more luxurious to pick an interesting word, which probably help the less thrashy parts to sound even weirder than they actually are.

It's a really good album and since I really, really love Dolvings non-Haunted stuff, I enjoy his diverse vocals on this album.

CONVERGE - No heroes

Yeah, I hyped this a couple of weeks ago and now I got it. Actually, that album overview didn't really do it for me. It's an abbreviation of the album that doesn't work in my opinion. The actual songs are much better.

So far I've only listened to it three, four times, but I feel that it's a strong album. Not as ultra dark as "You fail me", but heavy as hell. Awesome cover art by Mr Bannon as always...

ISIS - In the absence of truth

To tell you the truth (hoho...) my first impression of this new Isis album wasn't all that positive. It really sounds like pretty much everything else they've done the recent years. For me, early Isis is the shit. The crushingly heavy "The red sea" and the magnificient "Celestial" is their best releases in my mind.

But "In the absence of truth" is very good. Very Isis, and very good. And there's some double bass kicking on the album! How about that?

MADE OUT OF BABIES - Coward

Really cool and great noise rock band on Neurot Recording. It's like a mix of PJ Harvey and Neurosis. Or something. It's weird and good and interesting.

WOLF - The black flame

Local heavy metal heroes. Always good, always 150% metal! This band need to break through now. I mean, they already have four great albums out... Check it out if you need a fix of 80's metal!

That'll do for now.

Finally, something for the Swedish readers - I recently launched a new website called DVDKritik.se and I need to spread the name and URL. Check it out, and post about it in all your forums and that shit.

Non-Swedish readers can check it out aswell (that'll kick up the hits) but you won't understand much... :cool:

Possibly one of the albums of the year

A new album from one of my favorite bands are coming up soon. Very soon. This might be the album of the year, as Converge's last one "You fail me" was totally outstanding (yes, "Jane Doe" is great too).

Best album this year so far is the new Mastodon though. Check it out if you haven't heard it yet.